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Still a bad bill

Farm Bill another example of congressional excess

Rocky Mountain News

Published May 16, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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In a sad show of election-year politicking, the House Wednesday and the Senate Thursday passed the 2008 Farm Bill by veto-proof margins. President Bush still says he'll veto the measure anyway.

We hope the president stands firm, despite the long odds of prevailing. This is a battle worth fighting, if only to help educate the public about some details of the bill.

In Colorado's nine-member delegation to the Senate and House, only Republican Reps. Tom Tancredo and Doug Lamborn voted against it.

To be fair, more than two-thirds of the spending in the $290 billion bill pays for largely uncontroversial nutrition programs, including food stamps, much of which is worth passing in separate legislation.

But there's a bumper crop of bad policy in the rest of the bill, including payments to farmers that remain far too generous and biofuels boondoggles.

The 2002 Farm Bill allowed anyone (even such well-off folks as Ted Turner and financier David Rockefeller) to collect subsidies. The new bill would take some millionaires off the dole, but not nearly enough.

The Bush administration asked Congress to bar payments to households that earn more than $200,000 a year, to no avail. Another plan to cap total payments at $250,000 a year per farm household passed the Senate last year 56-43 but never made it in the final bill.

Instead, the limits that did survive will keep the corporate welfare flowing. Married farmers who make as much as $1.5 million a year could still collect payments, as could couples who earn up to $1 million a year in nonfarm income. So as some analysts have noted, a farm family with other business interests could conceivably make as much as $2.5 million a year and still cash subsidy checks from taxpayers. That's nuts.

Meantime, the biofuels provisions in the bill would mask the true cost of this energy source.

The bill cuts the tax credit for corn-based ethanol production from 51 cents a gallon to 45 cents. That may ease the incentive for farmers to divert corn from the food supply to the fuel tank, which has pumped up grocery prices.

But the bill adds subsidies for other biofuels. There's a $1.01 per gallon tax credit for producing "cellulosic" ethanol from plant waste, such as feedstock, wood chips or lawn clippings; $120 million for biomass research and development; and $320 million in loan guarantees for refineries making biofuels.

With gas prices pushing $4 a gallon, if biofuels are such a boon, they shouldn't need such significant government assistance to find their way to market.

Then there's a buyback measure that makes the nation's already scandalous sugar program even sweeter for producers. As described by National Review, "the federal government must purchase any 'excess' sugar from domestic producers at 23 cents per pound - and then immediately resell it to ethanol producers at 2 cents per pound, with the taxpayer stuck paying the 21-cent-per-pound difference."

Today, roughly 1 percent of Americans live on farms, when nearly a third did a century ago - and net cash income is expected to set a record this year of $96.6 billion. It's indefensible to expect every American to subsidize the few who are doing fine.

Comments

  • May 16, 2008

    1:58 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    PZ writes:

    Nice piece. You wouldn't know what's in the bill reading the NY Times and Wash Post articles. They're so far down the road of Bush = Bad that even when the guy has a point they won't acknowledge it. Bad bill, period.

  • May 16, 2008

    7:28 a.m.

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    roger44 writes:

    They made the promises just to get elected. They need to take a field trip to south America where they use sugar cane to make ethanol, get 10 times the energy out of it than corn, yet this country puts a tariff on it to protect the farmers here. 90 miles south of Florida is an island that could makes lots of it, but of course we don't want to talk to Cuba, might help some of the poor folks there. We don't need the terrorists to drag us down, the politicians are doing a pretty good job on their own.

  • May 16, 2008

    8:15 a.m.

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    bxwatso writes:

    Food stamps have always been a Dept. of Ag. program, just FYI.

    The reason congress tries to buy votes with pork is because they know the votes are for sale.

  • May 16, 2008

    8:53 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    anarchist writes:

    Froward69 posted in part "ever notice how, what ever the source of energy. It is not viable if big Oil does not own the rights to it?" Froward69, just how is it viable to convert to corn based fuels when production of corn for food is as great as it is? Big oil, and Republicans dont control eating do they? I say the true culprits are the eaters, if only they would stop we would have enough corn to use for fuel. In the meantime, how about setting up wind turbines in the senate, I am sure that way Nancy Pelosi would finally be of some discernable use.

  • May 16, 2008

    3:34 p.m.

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    MrPeabody writes:

    Froward - you are so clueless. 'Big Oil' runs the market?

    "Biofuels/home grown energy are the way to rid us of the need of imported fossil fuel. and Wars to secure it.(iraq)"

    How about removing the "hands-off" mandates on domestic oil production here at home? I know, we can't do that because it wouldn't allow your side to force feed us mandates for the renewable sources that you want that are not yet ready to stand on their own in the market. Only subsidies can allow them to work at the present time.

    The oil industry and infrastructure didn't develop overnight. The solution(s) to wean us off of oil won't either.

    Vince is right on this one - this farm bill is a piece of crap for all of the mischief contained therein. More corporate welfare for those already rich and for big agribusiness. I doubt that this is what FDR had in mind when he created farm subsidies. I suspect that he was targeting the true family farmer who was barely surviving. We should have this bill pared down to only help these folks now. We should also cut out the ridiculous ethnaol nonsense that leaves taxpayers holding the bag for the 21 cent difference on sugar.

  • May 16, 2008

    10:19 p.m.

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    Sweetpickle writes:

    It's a nearly perfect conservative bill.